What Happens When the Attending Comes to Work Rounds?

Residency training has long sought to balance close supervision with progressive freedom, slowly loosening the reins until trainees can function with complete autonomy. Recent concerns for patient safety have provoked calls for increased attending supervision across the board, under the assumption that fewer medical errors would result. However, the evidence backing such assumptions is sparse.

Researchers randomized medical teams on a single hospital's general medicine teaching service to receive either ordinary supervision (in which attendings saw new patients with residents, and reviewed the list of established patients, but did not join work rounds) or added supervision (in which attendings also participated in morning work rounds). Only …